El Calafate & Perito Moreno Glacier

The bus from Puerto Natales, Chile to El Calafate, Argentina was on-time, comfortable, and inexpensive.  The five-hour journey included a fairly straight-forward border crossing.  But crossing the border was noticeable:  roads on the Chilean side were nicer, as was the immigration building, and even the rest stop on the Argentinian side of the border was a wee bit dingy.  Despite those little differences, Argentina is mostly just as nice as Chile.  The country has similar beautiful scenery, a European vibe, is very gay-friendly, and seems to have an abundance of gluten-free and vegan options touted at all restaurants.

I didn’t go to those restaurants.

The town of El Calafate was super cute.  Despite being roughly the same size as Puerto Natales, El Calafate was a lot busier.  There were more shops, more restaurants, and just more stuff going on.  I accredit this to the fact that many travellers base themselves in the town and do day trips out to the sights.  Puerto Natales, on the other hand, is more of a stopping point for just a night before travellers make their way to spend a few nights in the national park.

The most noticeable inconvenience about being in Argentina was cash.  It’s hard to come by.  Argentina’s economic woes mean that the government and financial system have implemented cash restrictions.  The maximum withdrawal I could find at an ATM in town was for roughly AU$48, plus an 18.9% fee (WTF?)  I knew this would be a problem in advance, so I brought actual cash and converted that to pesos.  USD – and even AUD – were like gold, and I got a fantastic rate by exchanging my AUD for pesos with some dude in a little room upstairs from a restaurant.

It all seemed very sketchy at first, but it was actually really easy.  What an odd place.

I arrived in the evening, and I knocked off to sleep early as the next day was a big day for me.  I was about to check-off one of my 103 Things:  the Perito Moreno Glacier! 

I booked a fancy tour with Glaciar Sur because it was a special occasion.  Not just solely the glacier, the tour also visited an estancia (ranch).  Estancia Nibepo Aike was the one on the agenda, and despite the pouring rain at the very start of the day, the estancia was truly gorgeous:  it had beautiful flowers, horses in big fields, and a real taste of Patagonia:  gauchos on horseback and border collies herding cows into a paddock.  A sheep-shearing demonstration was performed and I was shocked that they take the wool off all in one big pelt!

There were tons of historical photos to look at about the sheep industry in Patagonia, along with plenty of old photos of the family who own the ranch.  The highlight, however, was the lunch.  What must have been the best meal of my trip, they served us lamb straight off the spit, with a whole buffet of fresh salads, and the most delicious bread which seemed as if white bread had an affair with a sopapilla and out popped this deliciousness nine months later.  The most delightful malbec was supplied to wash it down, and flan with dulce de leche was served for dessert.

Fuck, it was all soooo delicious.

From there, the tour embarked to see the main event.  The Perito Moreno Glacier is one of the world’s most stable glaciers – it’s not shrinking – and it’s also one of the world’s fastest glaciers, moving about 2 metres per day.  It empties out into Lago Argentino (Argentino Lake).

The tour started off with a little boat ride.  We rounded a corner to see a bit of the glacier at a distance, but then veered back into a cove to step ashore for a short hike.  The hike ended at a great viewpoint of the glacier.  From there, we re-boarded the ship and were served a bit of whiskey in a glass with glacial ice (or so they said) as we approached the glacier.

The glacier is truly spectacular.  The glacier face is about five kilometres wide, though we could only see about half from where our little boat was.  From the water level, the glacier didn’t look enormously tall, but then I noticed the triple-decker tourist ship right in front of it.  The ship – which was many times larger than the little boat I was on – was dwarfed by the glacier towering over it.  Ranging from 40 to 70 metres high, the glacier suddenly became immense.  At one point I guessed that we were 300 metres from it, but in reality, we were two kilometres away.  It’s just so enormous that it plays tricks on your mind!

After cruising on the lake for a bit, we docked and then took a minibus to the main visitor centre.  There are kilometres of viewing platforms to walk around: some way up atop a hill; others almost at lake level.  We had less than 2 hours here which was disappointing.  I could have spent all day.  But the time I did have there was amazing.  I went toward the right, which was away from the side of the glacier that we saw from the boat, and gained a whole new perspective on just how massive it was.  From the upper platforms, you can see the glacier reaching far, far back into the mountains.  It looks like it never ends.  Then, out of the silence, came a big crash and splash as a chunk of glacier calved into the lake and became an iceberg.  This happened every few minutes, though none of the calving I saw was notably large compared to videos I had seen online.

The drive back to town featured creatures that I had forgotten about after living in Australia for a decade:  skunks!  Some car hit a skunk or two in the road, and a whole bunch of other skunks were in the road mourning.  Everything just smelled terrible.

I had a whole day and a half more in El Calafate, so I visited the Glaciarium the next day.  It’s basically a museum dedicated to snow, ice, and glaciers.  It has a ton of information on the impacts of climate change (including terrifying maps of glacier recession in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field), and overall it was arranged logically and in a digestible way.  I spent a few hours there and really enjoyed it.

Aside from that, I spent quite a bit of time checking out the plethora of souvenir shops, boutique alfajor shops, and restaurants.  I even ate guanaco tacos!  And then it was time to travel a wee bit north, a bit deeper into the mountains.

But first, let me take a selfie.

Torres del Paine National Park

From Punta Arenas, I headed north to the smaller town of Puerto Natales – jumping off point to Torres del Paine National Park.  The town itself is very cute:  with nice shops, a small historical museum, and lots of colourful flowers everywhere.  Puerto Natales is built along a lake with gorgeous views of the mountains beyond and quite a few birds to see as well.

But enough about the town:  the Torres del Paine was the main event!  Torres del Paine National Park contains mountains, glaciers, rivers, and lakes, all with a very well-maintained trail network.  I was there for the W Trek – a trek that is shaped like… you guessed it:  a “W”.  The trek takes 4 to 5 days to complete, and we did 4 full days so I think we ended up skipping a wee bit of it, but we got most of it done.  I say “we” because I joined a group tour for it.  I didn’t want to have to deal with tents and sleeping bags and logistics so I just booked a group tour.  It was great to have local guides and have everything arranged for me, so I’m glad I did it, but I must say that the trek would have been just as easy doing it on my own.

The facilities along the trek were superb.  There are well-placed campsites all along the way, with dedicated camping for people who insist on carrying their own tents, pre-pitched tents available for hire, and even dormitory beds (and I assume private rooms too) in some of them.  Each site has a restaurant which serves breakfast and dinner, and they sell bagged lunches for your daily trek.  There are kitchen facilities which you can use if you insist on cooking yourself, and the bathrooms were largely clean with warm showers.  They rent out sleeping bags and towels, so really, if you have a reservation, you can rock up with your hiking clothes and a small backpack and you’re set.  You don’t need to worry about anything.  The whole operation of the national park is truly impressive, and I might even throw it out there:  luxurious.

It wasn’t 5-star accommodation, but compared to the Inca Trail a few years ago, the Torres del Paine was pretty luxurious!

The first day of the trek was by a long mile the most rigorous.  We left our hotel in Puerto Natales at an ungodly hour, but at least the drive was pretty:  with Andean condors flying around, lesser rheas (sort of like an emu or ostrich) roaming about, and guanacos (essentially undomesticated llamas with very pretty eyelashes) along the side of the road (alive, not roadkill).  We stopped at Mirador Lago Sarmiento (Sarmiento Lake Viewpoint) for our first views of the famous Torres del Paine.  “Torres” is Spanish for “towers”, and Paine means “blue” in a local indigenous language, the Torres del Paine roughly translates to “Blue Towers”.  They are three steep granite peaks which – despite the myriad of other beautiful sites in the national park – are the true highlight of the trek.

After 11km of trekking, much of it uphill, we made it to Mirador Las Torres (Towers Viewpoint).  The sky was absolutely clear and everything was gorgeous!

We had a bagged lunch for the day, which ended up being a vacuum sealed chicken burrito – and it was still warm despite us leaving super early that morning.  I was in burrito trekking HEAVEN!

After doing the same exact trek back, we had a campsite for the night just outside of the national park, at a place called Laguna Azul (Blue Lake).  My tent was just a few metres from the water, and the views were stunning.

We also got our first glimpses of some Chilean flamingos roaming about the shore.

Day 2 started with a few stops at two lovely viewpoints:  Mirador Cascada Paine (Blue Waterfall Viewpoint) and Mirador Nordenskjold.  We then took a ferry across one of the big lakes to reach our campsite for the night – Paine Grande – and to do a day trek to a viewpoint overlooking Lago Grey (Grey Lake) and the Grey Glacier.  The glacier ends in the lake so there were quite a few icebergs that had calved off were floating south through the lake, being pushed by the winds.

And by winds, I mean tropical storm force winds.  We only stayed at the beautiful viewpoint for a few minutes because the winds were literally tropical storm force.  But if that’s the worst weather we had on the entire four-day trek, then I’ll take it!

Day 3 started out from the Paine Grande campsite, ending at Los Cuernos campsite.  Unlike the previous day, the wind was completely still, which meant Lago Skottsberg was acting as a sort of mirror for the stunning scenery.

We also stopped at Mirador Glaciar Frances to see the hanging glacier of the French Valley.  The glacier just hangs on the side of the mountain, and bits and pieces fall off below with a thunderous roar.  These avalanches happened quite frequently here and at a bunch of other hanging glaciers that dot the park, but they were indeed more common on Day 4.

After spending New Years’ Eve at Los Cuernos campsite, I promptly made my way back to my tent and was in my sleeping bag by about 12:05am.  It was my fifth continent bringing in the new year – I just need to do it in Africa and Antarctica at some point!

Day 4 was a flatter, easier day, and while it wasn’t nearly as exciting as the first three days, it was still gorgeous.  After our trek – totalling around 60km in 4 days – we made our way by minibus back to Puerto Natales for a group dinner.  The rest of the group left very early the next morning to make the treks back to either Punta Arenas or El Calafate (Argentina) for their flights back to Santiago or Buenos Aires, and beyond.  I, on the other hand, wasn’t going too far.  So, I did what any reasonable person would do:  I booked in a 10am massage, then had brunch and did some souvenir shopping before catching a 2pm bus for the 5-hour journey across the Argentine border to El Calafate.

More on that in the next installment.  But first, let me take a selfie.